Movie Marketing Madness: Barry Munday

“I know what you’re asking yourself and the answer is yes. I have a nick name for my penis. Its called the Octagon, but I also nick named my testes – my left one is James Westfall and my right one is Doctor Kenneth Noisewater. You ladies play your cards right you just might get to meet the whole gang.”

While most men’s relationships with their junk may not be as deep as Brian Fontana’s, it’s certainly a sensitive topic and we will go to great lengths to make sure nothing bad happens down there. Some might even consider an injury there the worst thing that happens to them.

Such trauma is at the core of Barry Munday. The movie stars Patrick Wilson as the title character. After an altercation one night he wakes up in a hospital room to the news that he’s lost his berries. While pretty depressed about that he also finds a woman (Judy Greer) who he can’t remember ever having slept with has identified him as the father of the baby she’s pregnant with. So with no more children in his immediate future he tries to make the best of the situation that’s been placed in front of him.

The Posters

The movie’s one poster does a decent job of setting up the story and introducing us to the characters. Wilson and Greer are in an OB-GYN’s office, both with shocked looks on their faces, which makes it pretty clear that we’re dealing with a pregnancy comedy here. Each character has a little outline drawn on them that represents what’s missing from their lives as well. So on Greer there’s a drawing of a heart on her chest to symbolize love while there are two circles drawn on Wilson’s crotch, which doesn’t lend itself to much symbolism.

It’s not the funniest poster on the planet but it’s dry and amusing and gets the point across as best it can.

The Trailers

The trailer starts off by introducing us to Barry, who fancies himself quite the ladies man despite the fact that he seems to have no quantifiable success with actually picking up women. His attitude comes off as more than a little clueless. But then we see him on a date with, it turns out, a young girl that results in the injury at the hands of her father that’s at the core of the story. After finding out the bad news we then see him learn he’s being tagged as the father of a woman’s baby. So he goes along with it, meeting her family and trying to dive in to being a father the best he can.

It’s clear in the trailer that much of the comedy comes from Barry’s general cluelessness and kind of ridiculous and immature attitude about life in general. We see shots of him giggling at a support group for men who have suffered injuries to their area and acting like kind of a doofus in other situations. While Greer’s character isn’t exactly the most mature on the planet, her role seems to be primarily to react to him and his antics.

Also – Billy Dee Williams is in the movie. Just thought that should be noted.

Online

The movie’s official website is not all that robust, but that’s excusable since this is a small release with limited distribution.

The main page plays the Trailer automatically and has an About the Film synopsis of the plot as well as Cast & Crew credits, though no further information about those folks. There’s also a rotating series of pull quotes from early reviews of the movie from various outlets.

Towards the top of the page are sections where you can find out what Theaters are playing the film, view a Photo Gallery, download a Press Kit or Buy Tickets.

The Facebook page for the film doesn’t add a whole lot of information but does have a handful of video featurettes and a bit of information on buying tickets in addition to a couple photos and some more.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

Nada.

Media and Publicity

Most of the movie’s publicity came either from the release of the couple bits of marketing materials or from its debut at SXSW 2010.

Overall

Being a small film there’s an obvious reliance in the campaign on word of mouth in addition to the standard elements like the trailer and poster. Since those components work pretty well – indeed I doubt the movie would be on many people’s radar to begin with if it weren’t for the buzz coming out of SXSW – it winds up being a decent campaign. There’s not a lot to it and so can’t be judged against some of the bigger marketing pushes, but it gets its message across, even if the trailer and poster don’t quite display the humor and warmth that those SXSW reviews proclaimed it has. Still, it presents what looks to be a mildly entertaining movie to the audience that may be looking for something along these lines.